Tag Archives: DOM

$(“#iFeelBetter”).kindOf();

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This week’s jQuery lessons came as a relief following last week’s focus on JavaScript. jQuery solves a problem that I’m glad to learn was more universal than just my own shortcomings: the JavaScript language is bulky, the syntax is confusing, and small mistakes are easy to make.

Unfortunately, using the jQuery library doesn’t eliminate the possibility for error, but it does render errors much easier to locate and address. Hooray for jQuery!

The biggest challenge

The exercise I found most challenging had to do with the DOM. I wasn’t expecting to have such trouble with it—I understood the basics of parent-child and sibling relationships within the context of HTML—but I found that using the DOM jQuery methods to reference various elements abstracted the code to the point where I had trouble remembering what I was supposed to be doing in the first place.

I can understand how jQuery selectors are useful for referencing specific areas of code, and how jQuery actions simplify the code that would be necessary to make things perform the desired behaviors. I also understand that utilizing the parent-child HTML structure by referencing it in the JavaScript makes the code more dynamic—that is, as things within the code change, the JavaScript functions will still apply.

Yet for some reason, using the .next(), .children(), etc. methods just felt like a big riddle. Onwards to more practice, I suppose!

Fun facts

This is just nerdy, but I was really interested to learn that the common case used in JavaScript is called “camelCase.” I had noticed its structure in earlier lessons, but didn’t know anything about it. Apparently, it’s named for the shape of a camel’s humps—with each hump representing a new capital. Of course, we’ve all seen it used in cases like “iPhone and eBay.”

A side note along this nerdy grammar thread: Is anyone else frustrated with Codecademy’s consistent misuse of “it’s” when they mean “its”?

What’s next?

In addition to putting out feelers for our midterm web developer profiles, I’ve been giving some thought to what shape I want my final project to take. At Georgetown SCS, we have a number of WordPress microsites that serve specific populations. The Hoya Professional 30 and the SCS Commencement site are two examples of projects I’ve launched. There is a nascent desire among the administration to launch a student life website dedicated to events, social resources, and student groups here at SCS. I think this is a project I’d like to take on in order to test the new development skills I’ve learned. The major hurdle I’ll need to figure out is the hosting (the other microsites are hosted through Georgetown Domains, which limits the themes and add-ons you can use).

More to come!

Week 3: Challenge Accepted

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So far, we have learned about the different parts of a website such as the head, body, and paragraph in HTML. The following week, we learned how to make these parts look pretty using CSS, which is a language that focuses on the styling of a website.

Up until this week, I hadn’t had any major difficulty getting through the Codecademy lessons. The way I was powering through the lessons made me think coding was not as scary as I originally thought. I even found myself really getting into manipulating CSS to make a web page design more colorful.

This week’s JavaScript unit seriously challenged me. It was so different from HTML and CSS. I can’t say that I liked it if I’m being honest. However, I do understand the importance to learn this programming language. JavaScript uses three data types (strings, numbers, and booleans) to organize information. The lesson on using booleans made the most sense to me because it was a different way of writing an “if, then” statement.

The area where I started to get confused was with the arrays. I understood the concept but when I was applying it, I had to re-do my code a couple of times. When I got it wrong, I would look at the solution, go back, and correct my own code. It helped to see the solutions so that I could see where I went wrong. Also, I kept forgetting that sets of numbers start with 0 in JavaScript!

One concept I found interesting was how DOM elements relate to jQuery. Combining JavaScript with HTML using the library was much easier in comparison to combining it using syntax.

Overall, I appreciated this week’s challenge with JavaScript. I’m quickly learning that coding involves a lot of problem solving. With this perspective, it makes it easy to get excited about learning more.